Test of the Plantation

	Test of the
	Plantation
Discipline
Leadership
Requirements
Level 15 Principles of Leadership
Principles
Build a Plantation Headquarters Plant 3 Cocoa Seeds Have at least 7 Cocoa turned in Earn an extra seed
Demonstration
Demonstrated by Bryce in Desert of Shades on 2012-04-15.

You begin the Test of the Plantation.

Find a spot for your Plantation that is remote, and sow up to three seeds. Cocoa plants will need to be harvested at least three times during each week, and may only be harvested by a designated tender. Each week, plantations tended perfectly with maximum diversity of tenders each get an additional seed, as do the top seven most nearly perfectly tended plantations.

Each week, the seven plantations with the greatest turned-in harvest for that week are promoted, and the owner of any Plantation promoted three times advances in the Discipline of Leadership. Promotions need not be consecutive.

Remember, for maximum chance to get additional seeds, make each plant's Tender unique.'

Objective

Build a Plantation Headquarters and convince other people to tend your cocoa crops. Headquarters must be at least 2000 ft (about 125 coordinates) away from Chariot Stops, and 75 coordinates from other Plantation Headquarters. Cocoa must be planted within 1000 ft of the Headquarters.

Once you have your cocoa planted, you must notify your tenders that they've been selected to tend your trees. They can then tend the trees (harvest cocoa) every 12 RL (teppy) hours. Once the cocoa is harvested, it must be turned in by clicking on the Plantation Headquarters for the Plantation owner to get credit.

Passing the Test

Each plantation has a limited number of trees (initially 3 which you get when you sign up) allowed. Even if you have more cocoa seeds, you may not build more trees than your plantation is allowed. When you build a tree, you must designate a tender which can not be changed. Only the tender is allowed to harvest cocoa, up to once per 12 teppyhours. You may not designate yourself as a tender.

The plantation owner receives credit for cocoa harvested from their plantation and stashed there within the week. No benefit to cocoa traded for nor obtained from other plantations. No benefit for cocoa that is harvested but not stashed.

Each week, the top seven plantations advance. This ranking is determined by amount of cocoa harvested and turned in (perfect tending percentage is irrelevant). Advance three times to pass the test.

In addition, each week, perfectly tended plantations gain 3 additional cocoa seeds and the ability to grow three more trees. To be perfectly tended, each tree must have a different, unique, tender, and the tender must have collected and deposited at least 3 cocoa during the week. Also, the seven closest non-perfect plantations gain extra seeds and the ability to plant. These extra seeds will be found by the tenders the next time they tend after perfect tending and will be randomly distributed among the trees (which means that some tenders may find more than one seed, others may find none).

Strategies

Gaining seeds is the only way to expand your plantation, so in the long run it is better to have different tenders getting, say, 3-5 cocoa per tree per week and growing, rather than the same tender getting 12-13 per tree per week and missing the perfect bonus.

It is reasonable to try to get perfect tending a number of weeks to grow, and then concentrate on maximum amount of cocoa harvested after that. For example, you may want to grow with unique tenders and perfect tending until you advance once, and then plant all of your next seeds for one specific player who can harvest 10-13 times in a week on all of the trees assigned to them.

If you are not getting new seeds because some of your trees are tended by now inactive players, if you ever want to grow, your only option is to mulch those trees, they are not getting you anything and they are preventing a perfect tending.

Notes

• To pass the test, just harvest and stash enough cocoa per week to be in the top seven of non-passed plantations.
• If the competition is low, planting three trees for one single tender will give advances three weeks in a row and a test pass.
• Expansion and new seeds are not necessarily needed to pass the test.
• While expanding, you only want one tree per tender. If you have more than one tree per tender, it no longer counts as "perfect", and you will not automatically get more seeds.
• To count as "perfect" (100% in the report from last week) you need to plant all seeds, each tree in your platation must have a unique tender, and all trees must be harvested and the cocoa deposited into the plantation headquarters at least three times per week.
• You will receive three seeds from the University automatically upon starting the test.
• Every newly built plantation will directly allow three new trees to be built. Make sure you have seeds before you do this though.
• Mulching a tree kills that tree allocation ie. cannot directly plant a replacement tree even if you have a spare seed.
• Mulching a tree late in the week will affect the tending % (make sure you mulch the correct tree!).
• Not planting an earned seed lowers % towards perfect tend, eg had earned ability to plant 6 trees but only planted 5, all 5 were tended the minimum(3x) that week and all cocoa turned in but plantation only earned 83.3% perfect tending.
• If you try to plant more trees than your plantation allows, it will not let you (you do not lose the seed, just cannot plant it).
• You can immediately plant additional trees (if you have the seeds) after weekly advances - you do not need to wait for a tender to find a seed (only relevant if you have a source of seeds)
• If you mulch the last tree and the plantation doesn't have unplanted tree allocations since before, you cannot plant any new trees at this plantation ever. Rebuilding the plantation works though, if you have an extra seed.
• To only gain more seeds, after the plantation has passed the test, you want one or more trees that are perfectly tended every week. The more perfectly tended trees you have, the more seeds you may get, but since the goal is to keep the seeds, the tending % will drop over time until this plantation will be the last one considered for non-perfect tending expansion (see above). Rebuilding the plantation will restart this process.
• You can probably have more than one plantation, and each plantation can probably advance and pass the test, but you can probably only pass the test once yourself.

Maps of Plantations

Maps of Plantations by Region

Guilds

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